July 25, 2019 PAO Severstal, one of the world’s leading steel and steel-related mining companies, announces that it has completed the sale transaction of Mini-Mill Balakovo to Abinsk Electric Steel Works LTD. The consideration of the transaction is $215 million. The sale of Mini-Mill Balakovo will enable Severstal to focus fully on steel production at…
A journalist in Siberia has been found guilty over a reference he made to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” marking a milestone in Russia’s legal system. Mikhail Romanov was detained earlier this month over an article on the alleged torture of an academic that contained a reference to the famous phrase “Big Brother is watching.” A…
A Russian state official warned on Wednesday that an abandoned chemicals factory in Siberia could cause an environmental disaster akin to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident unless urgent action is taken to tackle it. The Usolyekhimprom plant, which produced chlorine and other chemicals in the Irkutsk region, was abandoned due to bankruptcy in 2017, according…
The international community should continue fostering dialogue between the government in Venezuela and the opposition, but not in order to impose its own agenda, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters during a visit to Havana. In the joint news conference with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez, Lavrov said Havana and Moscow agree that Venezuela’s…
Verkhnechonskneftegaz JSC, a subsidiary of Rosneft Oil Company, has extracted the 70-millionth tonne of oil at the Verkhnechonskoye oil and gas field. Its 400 wells ensure the daily output of approximately 21,500 tonnes of oil. The pilot operation at the field started in 2005, and since 2008 the Verkhnechonsk oil has been delivered through the…
Thousands of Russian women are posting selfies on social media with their faces covered in fake blood and bruises in an effort to push the government to pass a domestic violence law. A series of recent abuse cases have jolted Russia and prompted fierce discussions about attitudes towards domestic violence in the country. About one…
Russian lawmakers have passed legislation to allow bow-and-arrow hunting. Possession of bows for purposes other than sport and research is currently prohibited in Russia. Around 1 million unlicensed bows, crossbows and similar ranged weapons are owned by “hundreds of thousands” of Russians, lawmakers cite official data as saying. A newly passed bill distinguishes throwing weapons…
The blame game over a contamination scandal in Russia’s oil industry has breached President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft, the world’s biggest publicly-traded oil company, and Nikolai Tokarev, the boss of Transneft, the world’s largest pipeline network, are embroiled in an unusually public and rancorous dispute over their companies’ responses to…
In the early hours of Thursday, police raided four of the Moscow City Duma opposition candidates’ homes and summoned several others to appear for questioning. Lyubov Sobol, one of the candidates who was barred from the ballot, said she refused to appear for questioning after receiving a call on Wednesday night from investigators. Anti-corruption activist…
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was jailed for 30 days on Wednesday, his spokeswoman said, ahead of a march he planned to lead in Moscow in protest at the exclusion of several opposition-minded candidates from a local election in September. Police detained Navalny as he left his home earlier on Wednesday, accusing him of calling for…
President Vladimir Putin’s eldest daughter Maria Vorontsova has taken her first steps into the business world as a shareholder of a new firm developing a $634 million medical center near St. Petersburg, BBC Russia has reported. Nomeko, a contraction of the Russian phrase for ‘new medical company,’ was founded in January 2019 and is closely…
Foreign tourists have spent a record 864 billion rubles ($13.6 billion) in 2018 in Moscow, City Hall said Wednesday. Some 5.5 million foreign tourists visited the Russian capital last year, according to the mayor’s office. The influx placed Moscow in the top-20 list of the most visited European capitals last year, City Hall said. Thanks…
A Russian defense contractor accused by the United States of supporting cyberattacks has developed sophisticated software used to spy on smartphones, an American security company said on Wednesday. St. Petersburg-based Special Technology Center (STC) developed code that has been aimed at a small number of targets, including those interested in a rebel militia in Russian-allied…
The VDNKh park has had a long history as one of Moscow’s main exhibition spaces. Constructed in the 1930s, it was first known as the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition before it was renamed in 1959 as the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, or Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva. Today, VDNKh is home to a number…
The fatal stabbing of Russian LGBT activist Yelena Grigoriyeva in St. Petersburg has drawn strong reactions worldwide, with fellow activists lamenting a system that failed to protect her and anti-LGBT figures saying her killing was justified. Activists noted that a website that encourages visitors to “hunt down” people believed to be sexual minorities had added Grigoriyeva…
Vandals have defaced a Stalin bust and attacked a Communist Party office south of Moscow, highlighting the deep divisions in modern Russian society over the Soviet leader’s legacy. The Soviet Union repudiated Stalin after his death in 1953. Though blamed millions of deaths stemming from a series of purges and collectivized farm policies, many Russians…
Russia’s embassy in Seoul on Wednesday denied that Moscow had formally apologized to South Korea over an alleged airspace violation during a joint air patrol with China the previous day, Interfax reported. South Korea on Tuesday accused a Russian military aircraft of entering its airspace over a disputed island during a long-range joint air patrol…
Russian boxer Maxim Dadashev has died after suffering head injuries during a fight last week, the state-run TASS news agency reported Tuesday. The 28-year-old sustained the injuries in a fight in the United States against Subriel Matias. “It’s very sad. There are no words,” Russian Boxing Federation President Umar Kremlev told Sport Express media outlet,…
Russia is determined to interfere in U.S. elections despite sanctions and other efforts to deter such actions before the next presidential election in 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday. “The Russians are absolutely intent on trying to interfere with our elections,” Wray said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Wray appeared at an oversight…
Venezuela’s opposition, including representatives of its leader Juan Guaido, has been in contact with Moscow, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on its website on Tuesday. “We’ve been actively talking to representatives of Venezuela’s political landscape — government, opposition figures, including J. Guaido’s people, who are reaching out to us,” the ministry said, citing interviews given by…
The Bashneft Oil Refining Complex (a subsidiary of Rosneft Oil Company) has launched the commercial production of high-octane gasoline, RON-100, under its own technology. The start-up of the new product was achieved due to the implementation of the upgrading programme at the Ufa Oil Refining Complex as part of the Rosneft-2022 Strategy. RON-100 gasoline is…
Two expeditions have started on the Arctic license areas of Rosneft Oil Company as part of the Company’s polar bear research programme. The use of Russian ultra-light amphibian aircraft will provide for surveying the previously unexplored remote areas. The total length of the air survey routes will exceed 4,000 km. Specialists from the Severtsov Institute…
HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” is the most popular foreign television show among Russian viewers, the independent Levada Center polling agency said Wednesday. Recent Levada polling has said that Russians are increasingly spending their free time watching television and view it as a growing source of their happiness. The medieval fantasy “Game of Thrones”…
North Korea is holding 15 Russian and two South Korean crew of a fishing vessel for violating entry regulations, the Russian Embassy in North Korea said Wednesday. The crew were detained on July 17 by North Korean border guards, and are currently being held in a hotel in the city of Wonsan, the Russian embassy…
Russian lawmakers have approved legislation banning law enforcement authorities from extending pre-trial detentions for businesspeople without reason amid criticism over the criminalization of business disputes. Officials are seeking to lure investment to boost Russia’s struggling economy and President Vladimir Putin has called for an end to unfounded probes into so-called economic crimes. However, government polling…
uly 23, 2019, Büyükeceli, Province of Mersin, Turkey – Director General of Rosatom Atomic Energy Corporation Alexey Likhachev and the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Fatih Dönmez held a working meeting at the construction site of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in the Turkish province of Mersin. The parties acknowledged the progress of the…
More migrants have arrived in Russia in the first four months of 2019 than they did in the first four months of any year in the past decade, according to new research. The surge follows a historic low in migrant numbers recorded by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) in…
A section on the annexation of Crimea has been removed from the Russian edition of popular author Yuval Noah Hariri’s new self-help guide to living in a fast-changing world. Hariri, an Israeli historian and philosopher, is known for the bestselling titles “Homo Deus” and “Sapiens.” In Hariri’s third work, “21 Lessons for the 21st Century,”…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday it had conducted its first joint long-range air patrol with China in the Asia-Pacific region and that it had not been aimed at another country. The ministry made the statement after South Korea accused a Russian military aircraft of violating its air space earlier on Tuesday and fired warning…
Four children have died as a result of a massive fire that has all but wiped out a children’s camp in the Russian Far East. The fire broke out in the early hours of Tuesday, injuring several children and adults at the Khabarovsk region camp. Unnamed law enforcement officials suggested that a malfunctioning portable heater may…
For almost a decade, Alexander Temerko, who forged a career at the top of the Russian arms industry and had connections at the highest levels of the Kremlin, has been an influential figure in British politics. He’s one of the Conservative Party’s major donors. He counts Boris Johnson, the frontrunner to be Britain’s next prime…
An unsuspecting tourist strolling down Volkhonka Street on a weekday afternoon may notice a curious phenomenon. A strand of people unfurls from the yard of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts onto the sidewalk for nearly a block down the otherwise empty street. Hundreds of people wait in line to see one of the most…
Russian prisoners could soon work at correctional facilities near businesses under a new law that observers were quick to compare to Soviet-era gulag labor camps. Almost 33,500 out of nearly 550,000 inmates are currently doing time in 123 prison settlements across Russia. These settlements are a type of remote penal colony where prisoners are free…
The Russian government has taken steps to start military cooperation deal negotiations with China as the countries step up their arms trade. Russia has in recent months completed the delivery of 24 Sukhoi Su-35 combat aircraft to China under a $2.5 billion deal. Moscow offered another batch of the multirole superiority fighters to Beijing last…
Bashneft (an enterprise of Rosneft Group) has bought the 51% stake in the charter capital of a privately-owned plant producing catalysts for hydrotreatment processes with a capacity of up to 4,000 tonnes per year in Sterlitamak
Cecile Delpal’s hopes of freeing her husband Philippe from a Russian prison briefly got a boost when President Vladimir Putin told a gathering of business leaders that house arrest may be more appropriate for the French investment banker. But a Moscow judge had other ideas, extending Delpal’s pre-trial detention until October at a hearing this…
On this day in 1959, the Strugatsky brothers, Arkady and Boris, published their first sci-fi novel, “The Land of Crimson Clouds.” The tale of a dangerous trip in the 1990s to Venus, covered in crimson clouds, was the first work the brothers wrote and the only work they each wrote parts of separately. Legend has…
Russia carried out what it said was its first long-range joint air patrol in the Asia-Pacific region with China on Tuesday, a mission that triggered hundreds of warning shots, according to South Korean officials, and a strong protest from Japan. The flight by two Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers, backed up according to…
A prominent Russian LGBT activist who had been featured on a blocked website that encourages people to “hunt down” sexual minorities has been killed in St. Petersburg. The website, inspired by the “Saw” horror film franchise and which encourages visitors to track down and assault people believed to be LGBT, was blocked in Russia last…
Director Gerenal of Rosatom State Corporation A.E. Likhachev has sent his condolences to the members of the Secretariat of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in connection with the death of the Agency’s Director General Yu. Amano. It reads as follows: “On behalf of Rosatom State Corporation and personally, I offer deep condolences in connection…
Russia is boosting its military presence in the Arctic region in a bid to better protect its Northern Sea Route. Additional military infrastructure has been made operational along the country’s vast Arctic coast with the installation of radars, radio-electronic equipment, missile systems and other advanced weaponry. Russia’s Northern Fleet is taking a leading role in…
President Vladimir Putin handed Russian citizenship to gas producer Novatek’s veteran finance chief Mark Gyetvay on Monday, a move that could potentially help the U.S. national bypass some sanctions restrictions. U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 ban U.S. nationals and companies from helping organize long-term funding for some major Russian firms, including Novatek. The sanctions were imposed following…
TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom has signed the contract for nuclear fuel supply to the future power units 7 and 8 of Tianwan NPP with Suneng Nuclear Power Corporation and China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation acting as the customers (both companies are subsidiaries of China National Nuclear Corporation, CNNC). The Contract signing ceremony took place…
Russia‘s Defense Ministry denied on Monday its planes carried out airstrikes on the rebel-held Syrian city of Maarat al-Numan that hit a popular market and residential neighborhoods. The raids killed at least 20 people in the densely populated city in the south of Idlib province earlier on Monday and were believed to have been carried…
Tourists and businesspeople will be able to visit St. Petersburg on a simplified electronic visa starting this fall under President Vladimir Putin’s new orders. Putin has promised to offer e-visas to foreign visitors in 2021 as he vies to collect $15.5 billion in annual tourism revenue by the end of his presidential term in 2024.…
A southeast Siberian region recovering from weeks of deadly flooding has been hit by another plague: venomous vipers. Twenty-five people have died and seven people remain unaccounted for since the floods, described by scientists as the biggest in 180 years, hit the Irkutsk region in late June. Vipers were spotted almost immediately afterward and officials…
The Russian economy will fall into a recession in the next year and a half over a sharp drop in personal lending, the country’s economic minister has said. Russians have been racking up debt due to falling or stagnating real disposable incomes, an issue that President Vladimir Putin said risks creating an economic bubble. Economists…
Soviet satirical writer Mikhail Zoshchenko was born in Poltava, Ukraine to a Russian mother and a father descended from Ukrainian nobility. From a young age, he enjoyed writing poetry and prose. In school he was not a good student and attempted suicide after failing a composition class. At the age of 17, Zoshchenko began studying…
As many as 150 child cancer patients have been infected with hepatitis C in Russia’s Far East in an outbreak that parents and officials say is the result of unhygienic medical practices, BBC Russia has reported. Officials in the Amur region said parents had been ringing the alarm about a hepatitis С outbreak in the…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party took a commanding lead in Sunday’s snap parliamentary election, consolidating the power of the novice politician whose stunning rise has upended traditional politics in the war-scarred nation. A former comedian who played a fictional schoolteacher-turned-president in a popular TV series, the 41-year-old Zelenskiy has tapped into widespread voter anger over…
A Scottish exchange student was fined and briefly detained for giving a lecture on feminism in Siberia in the latest incident targeting foreign students in Russia. Last month, a German student was reported to have been expelled from a Russian university and ordered to leave the country after writing an article about environmental protests. Harriet…
Russian opposition leaders on Saturday led a protest in Moscow against the election commission’s decision to bar a host of candidates from the ballot for city council elections this fall that turned into the largest demonstration in Russia in recent years. Billed as the culmination of a week of daily protests that kicked off last…
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had “sympathized” with Donald Trump before the 2016 presidential election that swept Trump to power because of his desire to restore normal relations with Russia. In an interview with U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone dated June 19 and published on the Kremlin web site on Friday, Putin also said that…
The world is just beginning to come to terms with the scale of the previous century’s cruelty and carnage. Indeed, it is almost impossible to grasp the macabre tally of two devastating world wars, famine – both natural and manufactured — the disturbing rise of nationalism and fascism, the specter of atomic and nuclear weapons,…
The 23rd Session of Chinese-Russian Nuclear Subcommittee took place in Nizhny Novgorod on 19 July within the framework of the Committee on preparation of regular China-Russia summits. Zhang Kejian, Chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority, and Aleksey Likhachev, ROSATOM Director General, are the Committee Cochairmen. The Session participants summarized the year outcomes of the…
Russia’s state railway company appointed the former chancellor of Austria to its management board this week, continuing a trend of retired European politicians landing lucrative posts in Russia. Christian Kern, 53, headed Austria’s national railway system before serving as chancellor of the central European nation from 2016-2017. Austria has been among a minority of EU…
On Saturday Muzeon is celebrating its 27th birthday. The park on the banks of the Moscow River has a short but fascinating history. It began as nothing more than a construction site where all the detritus from building the New Tretyakov Gallery and the (then) House of Artists’ structure was deposited. In the 1980s artists…
Russia is planning to phase out paper passports within three years as part of its national digitization program, drawing support as well as criticism over privacy concerns, according to the official government website. The government resumed discussions on issuing digital passports last fall, five years after it initially considered the idea. Cost estimates for the…
Arseniy, an artist from the Russian city of Samara, has recently made waves on social media with a series of photographs made against the backdrop of an abandoned five-story building. The project is called “1m²” and addresses social issues and experiences encountered by normal Russians. The performances include showing a simple factory worker’s dinner, dreams…
Half of Russian workers earn salaries of less than 35,000 rubles ($550) a month, despite a small increase in average monthly income over the past year, according to newly released official data. Stagnation in real disposable income has led to a slow deterioration in the quality of life for ordinary Russians and is feeding a…